Method and system for providing communication party related information

ABSTRACT

Method of sharing contact lists, address books, buddy list between users that subscribe to a social networking service via voice calls, data calls (SMS/MMS) or instant messages /chat. Alledged goal is to provide an improved mechanism of providing communication party related information similar to caller ID for voice calls, the information being more than the telephone number. Only example given of this information is number, name, relationship and degree of separation.

BACKGROUND

The present application lies in the field of providing communicationparty related information to a party of a communication that comprises afirst and a second party.

Examples of such communications are a voice call (such as a telephonecall over a telephone network), a data call (such as an emailcommunication or an SMS (short message service)/MMS (multimedia messageservice) message) or a real-time chat.

In the field of communication it is known to provide a party identifierof one party of a communication to the other. For example, when acommunication between two parties, A and B, is established in atelecommunication network, a mechanism for forwarding identificationinformation between the e.g. calling party A and the e.g. called party Btakes place. For example, this party identifier or identificationinformation can be the telephone number of the calling party. Theidentification information helps the called party to identify who iscalling. The same concept is also known for data calls, such as sendingemails (the identifier being an email address), instant messages orreal-time chat (the identifier usually being some form of nickname oralias defined within the instant messaging service), SMS/MMS messages(the identifier usually being a telephone number or an email address).In telephone networks this mechanism is also known as a CallerIdentification Service (Call-ID).

It is furthermore known to provide a dedicated application incommunication equipment (e.g. mobile phones) for mapping the partyidentifier against a contact list or contact database in which partyidentifiers are associated with further party information, such as aname, a nickname, a photograph, a ring-tone, etc.

Such contact lists are customized by the user of the communicationequipment. When the respective party receives a party identifier, thenthe application can take the further party information from the contactlist as a form of extended presentation information, such that e.g. amobile phone will not show the generic telephone number of the callingparty, but the customized name from the contact list and/or a photographassociated with the calling party and/or ring with a dedicated ring-toneassociated with the calling party. In this way, the called party canreadily identify the calling party.

It is known to maintain such contact lists or contact databases withinthe communication equipment and/or within the communication network indedicated functions or servers. In the latter case this is also referredto as “network address books” or “network contact lists”.

The problem with the above-mentioned known concepts of providing partyrelated information is that typically the party identifier communicatedfrom one party to another or from the network to a party is of genericnature (such as a standardised telephone number), such that in itself itis not very useful for the receiver of the information, unless thereceiving party already knows the party identifier in the sense thatthis party identifier is in the receiving party's contact list oraddress book.

The object of the present invention is to provide an improved mechanismof providing communication party related information to a party of acommunication.

SUMMARY

This object is solved by the subject-matter of the independent claims ofthe present application. Advantageous embodiments are described in thedependent claims.

According to an aspect to the present invention, a method is proposedfor providing communication party related information to a party of acommunication that comprises a first and second party, named A and B inthe following, where the method comprises a procedure for automaticallyaccessing a contact list of a third party, named C in the following,different from the first and second party, a procedure for automaticallyderiving an information element on the basis of said contact list and atleast one of a party identifier of the first party and a partyidentifier of the second party, and a procedure for automaticallyproviding the information element to one or both of the first and secondparty.

Consequently, the present invention establishes the idea of generatinginformation on the basis of a contact list of a third party C differentfrom the two parties A and B involved in a communication, the party Cnot being involved in the communication, in order to enhance theprovision of communication party related information to one or bothparties A and B of the communication.

For example, the general concept of the invention can be applied in thesituation of providing customized contacting party identification to thecontacted party during establishment of a communication. Namely, if thegeneric contacting party identifier (e.g. the telephone number) is notpresent in the contact list of the contacted party, then theabove-proposed mechanism can be used to query a contact list of a thirdparty different from the two parties involved the communication, inorder to extract customized party related information, such as a nameand/or address.

According to another example, the general concept of the invention canalso be applied in a type of authentication or confirmation service.Namely, one communication party, who has e.g. received from the othercommunication party an indication that said other party is a friend oracquaintance of a third party, can than request a look-up in the contactlist of said third party, in order to determine whether the other partyis present there or not.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The general concept and specific examples of the present invention willnow be described with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 shows a flow-chart of a basic method embodiment of the invention;

FIG. 2 shows a flow-chart of a further method embodiment of the presentinvention;

FIG. 3 shows a flow-chart of a further method embodiment of the presentinvention;

FIG. 4 shows a flow-chart of yet another method embodiment of thepresent invention;

FIG. 5 shows a flow-chart of yet another method embodiment of thepresent invention;

FIG. 6 shows an example of the structure of a contact list;

FIG. 7 shows a schematic representation of message and signallingexchanges in an embodiment of the present invention, and

FIG. 8 shows a schematic representation of a network entity according toan embodiment of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

FIG. 1 shows a basic method embodiment of the present invention. In afirst step S10 a procedure is conducted for automatically accessing acontact list CL of a third party C different from a first party A and asecond party B of a communication. This communication can e.g. be avoice call, a data call or a real-time chat. In step S11 a procedure isconducted for automatically deriving an information element on the basisof the contact list CL and at least one of a party identifier of thefirst party A, referred to as AI in the following, and a partyidentifier of the second party B, referred to as DI in the following.For example, if first party A is a contacting party (such as the callingparty of a voice call) and party B is a contacted party (such as acalled party of a voice call), then the deriving of an informationelement on the basis of the third party contact list CL may compriselooking up the contacting party identifier AI in the third party contactlist CL and deriving as an information element further party relatedinformation found in association with the contacting partyidentification AI in contact list CL, such as a name or address.

Returning to the general example of FIG. 1, the method finally has astep S12, in which a procedure for automatically providing theinformation element to one or both of the first and second party isconducted. In the above-mentioned example of a contacting party A and acontacted party B, this can e.g. comprise providing the just describedinformation element that contains further party related informationfound in CL to the contacted party B.

It is noted that the term “contact list” is used generically within thecontext of the present specification and claims, and relates to any datarecord that associates a party identifier with further partyinformation, e.g. a telephone number with further information such asname, address, picture element, etc. As a consequence, the generic termcontact list therefore extends to records that carry a different name,e.g. an address book.

The term “party” generically describes any entity capable of beingconsidered involved in a communication. As such a party can be the userof a communication system or an apparatus involved in the communication.The party identifier consequently can be any information element capableof identifying a party, such as a telephone number, email address oruser name within a given communication context, such as a real-time chatservice. Generally, a party identifier can be a Universal ResourceIdentifier (URI).

The contact lists associated with the parties can be maintained in anysuitable or desirable way. For example, they can be maintained in thecommunication equipment of individual users, e.g. as is known for mobiletelephone devices having a contact list or address book. However, thecontact lists can also be maintained within a communication network,e.g. in a dedicated server. In this case, the contact lists could besimple copies of the contact lists or address book kept within thecommunication equipment of individual users, or the server storedcontact lists could also be kept according to a separate scheme fromthat used within the communication equipment. For example, the contactlists could be maintained according to a social networking service, inwhich users keep contact lists and enter data regarding personal,professional or academic links. Examples of such social networkingservices are Linkedln or Xing.

FIG. 8 shows a schematic representation of a system embodiment of thepresent invention. Reference numeral 8 represents a network entity, suchas a server, that basically comprises a control unit 81 (such as aprogrammable processor) coupled to a program memory 82 that carries theprograms for executing specific procedures on the control unit 81. Theexample of FIG. 8 furthermore comprises a database 83, in which contactlists of users, such as the shown parties A, B and C are kept. However,it is noted that in addition to or in replacement of database 83, thecontrol unit 81 could also be arranged to query contact lists maintainedin other places, i.e. within the communication equipment (such as amobile phone) of individual users. In other words, in the latter case,both the individual communication devices and control unit 81 comprisedata exchange procedures for conducting query and response steps.

The system 8 according to the example of FIG. 8 is arranged forproviding communication party related information to one or both partiesA and B with the help of the control unit 81, which is arranged forautomatically accessing a contact list of a third party different from Aand B (e.g. in database 83 or in the communication equipment of thethird party), for automatically deriving an information element on thebasis of that contact list of the third party and at least one of aparty identifier of the first party and the second party. Furthermore,control unit 81 is arranged for automatically providing the informationelement to one or both of the first and second party A, B.

As already mentioned, the contact list can be kept in any suitable ordesirable way, and in any suitable or desirable format. FIG. 6 shows anexample, in which a record is kept according to which information in aplurality of fields is stored. The contact list of FIG. 6 comprises aparty ID field for receiving party identifiers. In the example of FIG. 6these are telephone numbers. The contact list of FIG. 6 furthermorecomprises a “name” field, a “relationship” field and a “degree ofseparation” field, where the plurality of fields are linked in tabularform. Naturally, these are only examples, and other types of fields areenvisionable. The number of shown fields is also only an example, and asindicated by the dot marking . . . , further fields and further entriesare naturally envisionable, as FIG. 6 only shows a simple and schematicexample.

FIG. 6 shows the example of a contact list as it might be kept by one ofthe previously mentioned social networking services, such that it has afield “relationship” indicating the relationship status between theparty C owning the contact list and the party identified in the party IDfield, as well as a field “degree of separation” that indicates howclose the two parties are. More specifically, the degree of separationis an indication whether two people know each other directly (degreeof 1) or via other people (degree larger than 1). For example, if aparty D knows a party E, and a party F knows party E but not party D,then. D and F are separated to a degree of 2, i.e. one away from knowingeach other directly. Similarly, if party D knows party E, and party Eknows a party G that in turn knows a party H, where this is the closestlink between D and H, then D and H are separated by a degree of 3.

If a contact list has a degree of separation indication, then this canadvantageously used in the search strategy for other contacts, as willbe explained further on.

As explained previously, the step of deriving information element fromsuch a contact list can comprise first looking up a given partyidentifier in the “party ID” field, and then extracting a predeterminedfurther piece of information from a predetermined other field. Forexample, if the party identifier is +49 12345678 and the procedure instep 11 is arranged to extract the piece of information from the “name”filed, then step S11 would comprise deriving the piece of information“Paul” for the given party identifier.

The derived information element may be generated in any suitable ordesirable way, e.g. it could comprise only the extracted piece ofinformation (“Paul” in the above-described example), or could combinethe extracted piece of information with further information, such as theoriginal party identifier and/or a piece of information identifying thethird party C with which the contact list is associated from which thesupplementary piece of information was extracted. Naturally, this isonly an example, and other examples for generating an informationelement will be described further on.

The basic method shown in FIG. 1 can be embodied in a variety of ways.Especially, the determination of the identifier for identifying thethird party C, whose contact list is to be accessed, can be done in avariety of ways. According to a preferred example shown in FIG. 2, theprocedure first accesses the contact list BL of party B in step S20. Itmay be noted that in the context of the present example and in general(except where specifically indicated otherwise) the designations “partyA” and “party B” are completely symmetrical, i.e. do not imply acontacting or contacted party. As such the party B mentioned in step S20may have any role in the communication, i.e. can be the contacting orthe contacted party. In following step S21 an identifier for identifyingthe contact list CL is determined from the contact list BL of party B.In other words, the automatic access procedure determines a partyidentifier in contact list BL, and uses this identifier for finding anassociated contact list of a third party. The procedure for selecting anentry in contact list BL of party B can be arranged in any suitable ordesirable way, e.g. an entry can be chosen at random. Further examplesfor determining an identifier CI of the third party C on the basis ofthe contact list BL of the second party B will be given in connectionwith the examples of FIGS. 3 and 4.

Returning to the method of FIG. 2, the contact list CL of third party Cis accessed in step S22. In step S23 the party identifier AI of party A(i.e. the other party in the communication) is identified in contactlist CL. Then, in step S24 an information element is derived on thebasis of the contact list (like in step S11 of FIG. 1), and in step S25the information element is provided to one or both of parties A and B,like in step S12 of FIG. 1.

It is noted that step S24 (like S11) can be arranged in any suitable ordesirable way with respect to deriving an information element, e.g. ifthe outcome of step S23 is such that there is no entry for party A inthe contact list CL of third party C, then the derived informationelement could e.g. be blank or contain an indication that no entry wasfound.

FIG. 3 shows an embodiment corresponding to steps S20 to S24 of FIG. 2,i.e. a procedure for accessing a third party contact list and derivingan information element. In step S30 the contact list BL of party B isaccessed. In step S31 a counter referred to as n is initialized. Then,in step S32, a first identifier I(n) associated with n in contact listBL is determined and a corresponding contact list L(n) identified byI(n) is accessed. For example, it can simply be a counter starting at 1and step S32 consists in accessing the n-th entry of contact list BL.Alternatively, the entries in contact list BL could be grouped accordingto some form of preference, and counter n could be used to addressindividual elements of specific groups. For example, the contact list BLcould be maintained in such fashion that only a sub-set of entries isavailable for the search procedure, and step S32 only accesses suchentries, which could e.g. be marked in a specific way, for example by apredetermined flag. If the contact lists use the above mentioned “degreeof separation” field, then groups could e.g. be defined on the basis ofthe degree of separation value. For example, the search could berestricted to entries having a degree of 1. Or a set of groups could bedefined, where a first group that is first searched could be defined bythe degree of 1, a second group to be searched if the search in thefirst group yields no result, could be defined by entries having adegree of 2, etc.

In a next step S33 it is determined whether the identifier AI of party Ais to be found in contact list L(n). If this is not the case, then theprocedure goes to step S34, in which it is determined whether counter nis at its end or whether further entries are available for examination.If further entries are available, then the procedure goes to step S35,in which n is set to the next value, and the procedure loops back tostep S32. If the outcome of step 934 is such that no further value of nis available, then the procedure ends.

On the other hand, if the outcome of step S33 is such that theidentifier AI of party A is found in contact list L(n), then thecorresponding identifier I(n) is chosen as the third party identifier CI(see step S36) and the corresponding contact list CL is accessed in step937, in order to appropriately derive an information element on thebasis thereof in step S38, as described previously.

FIG. 4 shows a further embodiment, in which again a possibleimplementation of steps S20 to S24 is shown. In step S40 the procedurefor automatically accessing the third party contact list first accessesthe contact list AL of party A and the contact list BL of party B. Then,in step S41, again a counter n is initialized. In step S42 a commonparty identifier I(n) is determined in both contact lists AL and BL. Inother words, it is looked for a party identifier (such as a telephonenumber) that is identically found in both the contact list AL of party Aand the contact list BL of party B.

Then, in step S43 the corresponding contact list L(n) is accessed, inorder to determine whether AI is present therein. If this is the case,then the information element is derived in step S46 on the basis of theentry associated with AI in L(n). If there is no entry for AI in L(n),then the procedure goes to step S44, in which it is determined ifcounter n is at its last value or whether further values are available(i.e. whether there are further common party identifiers in both contactlists AL and BL). If a further value is available, then the value of nis set to the next value in step S45 and the procedure loops back tostep S42.

In searching for a common party identifier, it is again possible todefine specific search strategies that make use of information in thecontact lists under consideration. For example, if the contact lists usea “degree of separation field”, then the degree of separation value canbe used to prioritize the search. Similar to the previous example, afirst group could be defined of all entries having a degree of 1 (i.e.people known directly), and the search be designed to first go throughthis group. If this proves unsuccessful (i.e. no common identifier isfound), then the search could go through a second group defined by theentries having a degree of 2, etc.

As already indicated previously, the procedures described in FIGS. 2, 3and 4 are applicable regardless of the role that party A and party Bplay in the communication comprising A and B. Preferably, they areapplied such that party A is a contacting party (e.g. a calling party ofa voice call) and party B is a contacted party (e.g. a called party of avoice call). In this case, the party identifier AI of party A willtypically be communicated during the communication set-up and thusreceived by e.g. entity 8 of FIG. 8 in the network. The communicationset-up messages (e.g. an INVITE message) will also comprise theidentifier ET of the contacted party. However, it is noted that in thegeneral situation of FIGS. 2 to 4 the two party identifiers AT and ETcan be provided in any suitable or desirable way, e.g. in dedicatedrequest messages from one party in order to obtain information regardingthe other party.

Returning to the example of party A being contacting party and party Bbeing a contacted party, the present invention can furthermore beembodied in such a way that a triggering of the procedures shown inFIGS. 1 to 4 can be made dependent on the condition that the contactingparty identifier AI is not to be found in the contact list BL ofcontacted party B. There can be different reasons for an identifier tonot be findable, e.g. because there is no entry with that identifier, orthere is an entry with the identifier, but that entry is blocked againstbeing accessed. In the case that the party identifier AI of thecontacting party can be found in contact list BL of party B, it issimpler and more practical for the contacted party B to make use of theknown information presentation function according to which presentationinformation associated with the contacting party identifier AI is takenfrom its own contact list BL, such that there is no need to query athird party contact list CL. This function of checking whether AI is tobe found in BL can be present in the network, e.g. in a control elementof the network, and/or in the communication equipment of party E.

As already mentioned, the information element derived on the basis ofcontact list CL of third party C can be arranged in a number of ways.For example, it may comprise extracting one or more parts of furtherparty information associated with the calling party identifier AI, e.g.extracting the entry in the “name” field (see FIG. 6) associated withthe calling party identifier AI. Then, these one or more parts can beplaced in the information element and be provided to the contacted partyP.

As an alternative or addition to this procedure, the automatic derivingof the information element based on the contact list may also comprisedetermining whether the contact list CL of the third party C comprisesan entry associated with the calling party identifier AI and generatingthe information element as comprising a confirmation indication and thethird party indicator CI if the entry is present. The idea of thisembodiment is that one must not necessarily extract any information fromthe third party contact list CL, as some third parties C might not wantthat their personal entries are exploited, e.g. because they usenicknames or other confidential information. Nonetheless, by providingthe contacted party with an indication that the contacting party isentered in the contact list of third party C, and at the same timeidentifying the third party C, useful information beyond the genericcontacting party identifier AI can be provided to the contacted party.

Now a further embodiment of the present invention will be described,which can be combined with any of the previous embodiments. FIG. 5 is aflowchart showing a method of authentication or confirmation based onthe general concept of the present invention. In FIG. 5 the procedurefor automatically accessing the contact CL of the third party Ccomprises receiving a request from one of the first and second party,which request message comprises an indicator for identifying the thirdparty C. This is shown in step S50, in which it is assumed that party Bsends a request message comprising the third party identifier CI to adedicated network entity, such as entity 8 shown in FIG. 8. Theprocedure for automatically deriving an information element on the basisof the contact list CL then accesses the third party contact list CL instep S51 and determines in step S52, whether or not the party identifierAI of the other communication party A is present in contact list CL. Itis noted that the party identifier AI may also be contained in therequest message received in step S50, or may be obtained otherwise inthe network, e.g. from the general communication control functionhandling the communication between A and B. If the outcome of step S52is such that the party identifier AI of party A is present in contactwith CL of third party C, then step S53 generates an information elementconfirming this presence. This generated information element is thensent to the requesting party B and possibly also the other communicationparty A. In accordance with this embodiment, it is possible for one partof a communication to check information provided by the other party.Namely, it is e.g. possible that party A has identified itself as anacquaintance of party C, where party B knows party C but does not knowparty A. In this case, the procedure of the present invention can beused to automatically conduct a confirmation on request, e.g. in amobile telephone context it is possible to send the appropriateconfirmation message to party B as an SMS displayed to party B duringthe ongoing communication between A and B.

According to a further embodiment of the present invention, theprocedure of automatically deriving an information element on the basisof the contact list CL of the third party C comprises an authorizationstep of determining whether it is allowed to derive an informationelement on the basis of the contact list CL of the third party C. Inother words, it is preferable to additionally provide a type ofauthorization function that permits or blocks the generation of aninformation element on the basis of the third party contact list CL.Such a function can then be adjusted by the third party C in a desiredway, e.g. in such a way that access is only allowed to certain entries,that access is only allowed for certain parties A or B, and/or that onlyspecific information parts (e.g. only the contents of specific fields)may be extracted, whereas other access and/or extraction is denied.

FIG. 7 schematically shows the signalling exchange between differentnetwork entities and communicating parties A and B during acommunication set-up, e.g. a voice call set-up. Element 71 representsthe user equipment (e.g. a mobile phone) of party A and referencenumeral 76 refers to the user equipment (e.g. a mobile phone) of partyB. The user equipment entities 71 and 76 are connected by an appropriatenetwork schematically represented by elements 72 and 75, which will bedifferent entities depending on the details of the network and networktechnology. Also, they do not intend to represent a complete network ordetails of communication set-up, as this is basically known and plays norole for the present invention. As an example, in the case of an IFmultimedia subsystem (IMS) network, entity 72 may be the Call SessionControl Function (CSCF) associated with party A while entity 75 is theCSCF associated with party B. On the other hand, if the connectingnetwork is a mobile telephone network, then entity 72 may be the MobileSwitching Center/Visitor Location Register (MSC/VLR) associated withparty A, and entity 75 can be the MSC/VLR associated with party B.Naturally, elements 72 and 75 could also be appropriate correspondingparts of another form of telephone network, such as a public switchedtelephone network (PSTN).

FIG. 7 is an example of a communication set-up. Initially, party A sendsan INVITE message 710 towards party B, which arrives at control element72. Control element 72 then forwards this invitation in message 711towards user B, i.e. to the corresponding control element 75 associatedwith party B. The control entity 75 associated with party B may thentrigger a function according to which entity 7 is contacted, which is anexample of the system explained previously in connection with FIG. 8.Message 712 comprises identifiers of parties A and B. Entity 7 comprisesan entity 74 arranged for implementing one or more of the abovementioned methods. Entity 74 can e.g. be a function implemented assoftware in the control unit 81 described previously in connection withFIG. 8. It may e.g. be referred to as an extended call-ID function. Itcan for example first check whether party A is known to party B, i.e.whether the party identifier AI of party A is present in the contactlist BL of party B. If this is the case, then preferably no furtheraction is undertaken, as party B does not require any furtherinformation on party A.

On the other hand, as shown in the example of FIG. 7, in which it isassumed that party A is unknown to party B, then one of the abovementioned procedures is conducted, in order to access a contact list CLof a third party C. In the example of FIG. 7, entity 7 furthermorecomprises an entity 73, which is an authorization function for allowingor blocking access and/or extraction of information from contact list CLof third party C. The process of invoking the authorization function 73is shown as message 713 and the response is message 714. If the responseis such that authorization is given, then an information element isgenerated and provided to control entity 75 in message 715. For example,an information element extracted from the contact list CL of party C canbe added as a call-ID element in the call set-up procedure and in thisway forwarded from control entity 75 to party B in INVITE message 716.Thus, party B can be provided with extended party related informationassociated with party A, despite the fact that party B does not knowparty A and has no corresponding entry in its contact list.

It is noted that the term “entity” refers to an element of a networkthat provides a certain functionality, where an entity can be providedwithin a single physical unit, such as a server, or can be spread outover several physical units.

As already mentioned in connection with FIG. 8, the above describedmethods may be implemented as computer programs in a programmableprocessor. Consequently, the present invention can also be embodied as acomputer program comprising computer code parts arranged for conductingthe inventive methods when executed on a processor, and as a computerprogram product carrying such computer program parts, e.g. as a datacarrier.

Although the present invention has been described with reference tospecific embodiments, these only serve to better illustrate the generalconcepts, and the scope of protection is defined by the appended claims.Reference numerals in the claims only serve to make the claims easier tounderstand, but have no limiting effect.

1. A method of providing communication party related information to aparty of a communication that comprises a first and a second party, saidmethod comprising: a procedure for automatically determining a partyidentifier of a third party, which is different from said first andsecond party, on the basis of a contact list associated with said secondparty, and for automatically accessing a contact list of said thirdparty, a procedure for automatically deriving an information element onthe basis of said contact list and at least one of a party identifier ofsaid first party and a party identifier of said second party, and aprocedure for automatically providing said information element to one orboth of said first and second party.
 2. The method of claim 1, whereinsaid communication is one of a voice call, a data call and a real-timechat.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein said procedures are implementedin an entity of a communication network handling said communication. 4.The method of claim 1, wherein said procedure for automatically derivingan information element comprises identifying the party identifier ofsaid first party in said contact list of said third party.
 5. The methodof claim 1, wherein said procedure for automatically determining a dailyidentifier of third party comprises determining a common partyidentifier found in both a contact list associated with said first partyand said contact list associated with said second party the common partyidentifier being the third party identifier.
 6. The method of claim 4,wherein said first party is a contacting party and said second party isa contacted party, and said method furthermore comprises receiving acontacting party identifier associated with said contacting party andtriggering said determining of said third party identifier if saidcontacting party identifier is not to be found in said second contactlist.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein said procedure for automaticallyderiving said information element based on said contact list of saidthird party comprises extracting one or more parts of further partyinformation associated with a party identifier of said first party andplacing said one or more parts in said information element.
 8. Themethod of claim 1, wherein said procedure for automatically derivingsaid information element based on said contact list of said third partycomprises determining whether said contact list of said third partycomprises an entry associated with a party identifier of said firstparty and generating said information element as comprising aconfirmation indication and said third party indicator if said entry ispresent.
 9. The method of claim 1, wherein said procedure forautomatically accessing said contact list of said third party comprisesreceiving a request message from one of said first and second party,said request message comprising an indicator for identifying said thirdparty, and where said procedure for automatically deriving aninformation element on the basis of said contact list of said thirdparty comprises determining whether said contact list of said thirdparty comprises an entry associated with an identifier of said other ofsaid first and second party and generating said information element ascomprising a confirmation indication if said entry is present.
 10. Themethod of claim 1, further comprising an authorization step ofdetermining whether it is allowed to derive and/or provide saidinformation element on the basis of said contact list of said thirdparty.
 11. A system for providing communication party relatedinformation to a party of a communication that comprises a first and asecond party, said system comprising a control unit arranged forautomatically determining a party identifier of a third party, which isdifferent from said first and second party, on the basis of a contactlist associated with said second party, and for automatically accessinga contact list of said third party, for automatically deriving aninformation element on the basis of said contact list and at least oneof a party identifier of said first party and a party identifier of saidsecond party, and for automatically providing said information elementto one or both of said first and second party.
 12. The system of claim11, wherein said communication is one of a voice call, a data call and areal-time chat.
 13. The system of claim 11, wherein said system is in anentity of a communication network handling said communication.
 14. Thesystem of claim 11, wherein said control unit is arranged foridentifying a party identifier of said first party in said contact listof said third party.
 15. The system of claim 14, wherein said controlunit is arranged for determining a common party identifier found in botha first contact list associated with said first party and said contactlist associated with said second party as the third party identifier.16. The system of claim 14, wherein said first party is a contactingparty and said second party is a contacted party, and said control unitis arranged for receiving a contacting party identifier associated withsaid contacting party and triggering said determining of said thirdparty identifier if said contacting party identifier is not to be foundin said second contact list.
 17. The system of claim 11, wherein saidcontrol unit is arranged for extracting one or more parts of furtherparty information associated with a party identifier of said first partyand placing said one or more parts in said information element.
 18. Thesystem of claim 11, wherein said control unit is arranged fordetermining whether said contact list of said third party comprises anentry associated with said party identifier of said first party andgenerating said information element as comprising a confirmationindication and said third party indicator if said entry is present. 19.The system of claim 11, wherein said control unit is arranged forreceiving a request message from one of said first and second party,said request message comprising an indicator for identifying said thirdparty, and for determining whether said contact list of said third partycomprises an entry associated with an identifier of said first andsecond party and for generating said information element as comprising aconfirmation indication if said entry is present.
 20. The system ofclaim 11, wherein said control unit is arranged for determining whethersaid control unit is allowed to derive and provide said informationelement on the basis of said contact list of said third party. 21.-22.(canceled)